OLAF BREUNING

PATTERN PEOPLE

source: berlinartlink

Olaf Breuning is a master of balance. His work oscillates gently between what is genuine and what is false, imagined or real. Inside his bright New York studio, tiny figurines and mementos pepper every surface in between the artist’s drawings and photographs. Breuning does not want to choose just one medium to work with; in addition to film he works with photography, installation, and sculpture and spends a great deal of time drawing. Sketches scatter across the table and desk in his workspace.

In many cases, what you see is at once recognizable and familiar, but defined and warped by his own unique language. There is something very impish and playful on the surface of the work, but you sense that something darker exists just beneath it, similar to spending time with the artist himself. He is very welcoming and open in conversation with an ever-sharp intensity and challenging tone presenting itself out from under his European politeness. It is this subtle duality that makes his work interesting and delightfully complex, causing the viewer to waver between strange affection, humor and disdain. This is especially evident in Home 3. The resulting imagery will have you laughing and cringing at the same time.

Home 3 is the most recent in a series of films created by Breuning, featuring his good friend and long-time collaborator, Brian Kerstetter. The aim was to produce something nervous and New York-like that could function as a snapshot. These days Breuning does not follow a traditional narrative scheme; this is more of an abstract, autobiographical video about adventures in New York with Kerstetter over the last ten years and how things have changed.

The film was shot and edited by the artist using a hand-held camera and Final Cut. This unobtrusive set up made it easier to gain participation from people all over the city–conversations would start about the project and people on the street were more than willing to seize the opportunity to get involved. In one instance the duo encountered an enthusiastic group of boys who wanted to participate. Olaf is a lifetime Hip Hop fan, and they wanted to shoot a video. Despite differences in cultural backgrounds, age and race, the need to make art and the lure of exposure brought them together for one of the strangest hotel scenes you’ll ever see. Breuning highlights our delight and discomfort with celebrity culture in a technology-heavy society. Films can be viewed in full in an institutional venue, but the internet is a different kind of platform of dissemination that allows the work to be absorbed into our culture of immediacy.

Breuning tends to listen to music for inspiration more than he looks to other artists–in fact he doesn’t even like artists at the moment–they’re not really on his radar. He feels that something is lost, or that humor in art has been killed off by overanalyzing or overdoing it. “You can make a joke in the art world only once or twice before it is dead.” Breuning appreciates work that is not necessarily driven by a social message, just something with meaning behind it. And style. Lots of it.

Most recently, he built a stage in his studio to create a series of camel photos for a solo gallery exhibition, CAMELOPS FEMINA, presented in Dubai at Carbon 12 gallery. Six women and one man portray camels in the images. Here, the artist raises questions about the culture and the dress code in that region while using humor–not an easy task. The people in Dubai are fairly open and censorship is unlikely, but a negative review would have been damaging for all involved. Once again Breuning walks the line using a mix of well-planned commentary tinged with hilarity.

Currently, the artist is developing a grand installation for the Paul Klee Museum in his native Switzerland, set to open later this year. He is also working on a new photographic series reflecting the evolution of human kind using personified elements and objects like earth, light, wind, fire, kings, ships, and iPhones. He will continue to delight us with spontaneous stories based on primitive human things, origins, and desires. It is possible that he will add painting to his repertoire soon as well, which would be just fine, because truly there is nothing Olaf Breuning can’t do.
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source: zpkorg
«Unfortunately I can’t paint», Olaf Breuning maintains with regret. At the same time – or perhaps precisely because of this – he has been experimenting for a long time with colour. He covered people with paint just as if their bodies were a canvas. He orchestrated fire works to exploding colour compositions. Then he painted over coloured or printed transparent foils. All these actions served to be recorded in photographic form as pictures.
In the Felix Klee room of the Zentrum Paul Klee, Olaf Breuning is realising a collaborative art work from 23rd August until 10th November 2013. The Swiss artist, who has lived in New York for 13 years, has thought up a concept for a gigantic mural, which for the duration of the exhibition will be created through the participation of visitors to the Zentrum Paul Klee. The advancement of the work processes can either be followed on different channels or through repeated visits (multiple entry for the exhibition is free) be part of the continuing creation.
In his work Olaf Breuning does not restrict himself to just one single medium but works simultaneously with photography, film, sculpture, drawing and most recently painting. He is just as fascinated by items found in discount stores as by individual hand-made objects. His art wishes to be simply accessible and appeal to every observer in some way or another. Wit and humour function often as the key to comprehension but also reveal certain impenetrable depths.
In the work that Breuning has conceived for the Zentrum Paul Klee, the performative act is no longer just the means to an end. It is not used to produce a photograph as in some of his other „painting“ works, but uses the collaboration of the public during the entire duration of the exhibition, to become the actual essence of the work itself. The centre of interest is the procedure. This is determined partly by the situation at the outset that Breuning creates by placing hundreds of trays with cups filled with various different colours in a grid-like form on the wall. The visitors to the exhibition will throw balls at them so that the colours splash onto the wall. The artist surrenders the completion of his work of art to the public and in so doing also to chance. In this way Breuning makes the intensely charged moments in the production of the art work visible, oscillating between genial creation and coincidence or between concept and expressive execution.
Following the exhibition of Rémy Zaugg in 2007, Olaf Breuning’s show is the next single exhibition dedicated to a contemporary Swiss artist at the Zentrum Paul Klee. With his actute talent for observation, his ironical view of events as well as his interest in artistic processes, Breuning is a predestined exhibition partner for the Zentrum Paul Klee.
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source: zupi
Tomando a forma humana como tela em branco, o suíço Olaf Breuning iniciou uma investigação artística de longo prazo a respeito do corpo e das cores.
Tudo começou em 2009, com os Color Studies – uma exploração das cores azul, vermelha, amarela e verde. Em 2010, foi a vez de Andy Warhol e Marilyn Monroe serem referenciados por Breuning nas duas partes do projeto Marilyns. Em 2011, o artista deu início ao projeto The Art Freaks, no qual presta homenagem a uma série de artistas, incluídos aí Van Gogh, Mondrian, Miró, Pollock, Basquiat e outros. Num trabalho inspirador, Breuning trata de inspirações.
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source: boumbang
Né en 1970, Olaf Breuning est un artiste suisse dont les productions visuelles saturées de couleurs viennent interroger le spectateur sur ce qu’est le sérieux. Détournant les clichés des courants artistiques dominants du XXe siècle (pop art, photographies surréalistes, art abstrait…) ou produisant des parodies de clichés de type documentaire, les images qu’il fabrique intègrent le corps de ses modèles à des oeuvres à l’abord apparemment simple.
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source: hatjecantzde
Der Schweizer Künstler Olaf Breuning, 1970 in Schaffhausen geboren, ist in den letzten drei Jahren durch seine Beteiligung an internationalen Gruppenausstellungen wie »Missing Link« (Kunstmuseum Bern/Kunst Haus Dresden), »Hypermental« (Kunsthaus Zürich/Kunsthalle Hamburg) oder »Let’s entertain« (Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis/Centre Pompidou, Paris/Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg) einer breiteren Öffentlichkeit bekannt geworden. In seinen Fotografien, Videos und Installationen setzt sich Olaf Breuning mit der medialen Wirklichkeit auseinander, die uns täglich umgibt. Er bedient sich dabei eines riesigen Arsenals an Bildern aus Film, Fernsehen und Werbung, aus Videoclips und Computerspielen, die er zu einem hybriden Mix von nonchalanter Eleganz fügt. Nichts ist zu heilig oder zu profan, um nicht spielerisch-hintersinnig kombiniert zu werden: In seiner Installation »Ugly Yelp« von 2000 etwa kreiert Breuning mit Versatzstücken aus Okkultismus, Esoterik und Vampirfilm ein Ensemble, in dem sich Ekel, Süße und Kitsch, Schauer, Humor und Ernst zu einer eindrücklichen Bildwelt vereinigen.